How to decide when it’s time to expand your business

Canadian Business Magazine/Kat Tancock

The Job Shoppe’s Meighen Nehme on seizing growth opportunities when and where they pop up

Founder and president Meighen Nehme had always intended for her hiring and recruiting company The Job Shoppe to operate in multiple cities. After launching in Windsor, Ont., in 2003, she had built the organization up to about eight staff members when the economic downturn hit in 2008. But where some saw doors closing, Nehme saw others waiting to be pushed open. It was then that she decided it was time to open a second location in her hometown of London, Ont., about 200 km away, despite having a five-month-old baby at the time. “I needed to move quickly,” she says. “It was just the right time.”

urns out, the expansion was well-timed, indeed. With a strong manager in place in Windsor, she was able to shift her focus to London, transferring one recruiter over and then hiring a new manager and support staff. And with minimal business in Windsor for the next couple of years, the new office provided an opportunity for growth in a shaky economy. “It was a point in the business where if I hadn’t opened up that second location in London, I probably would have had to fold the company,” she says.

Now with five locations in Ontario and two in the U.S., Nehme is an old hand at opening up new shops, and credits her experience building the business in Windsor and London for her successful launches elsewhere. “We had a model that we just replicated,” she says. “I had these best practices and workflows [in place] so I didn’t have to go in and recreate the wheel. I just had to identify the business in that area and adapt those policies and procedures to that location.” [Read More]